Alan Stewart’s UK and Ireland family history news

General Register Office introduces new charges

The UK’s Home Office Identity and Passport Service (IPS) announced new GRO charges on 1 March 2010.

New charges for people ordering birth, marriage and death certificates were announced by Registrar General James Hall.

From Tuesday 6 April 2010 the eight separate fees currently charged by the General Register Office (GRO) for ordering a certificate will be reduced to two – one for standard orders and one for the priority service.

TheIPS says that the changes – the first for the GRO since 2003 – will ensure that the costs of providing the service are recovered from fees and not subsidised by the taxpayer.

Mr Hall said: “The General Register Office receives more than two million certificate orders every year, the vast majority of which, over 90 per cent, are ordered online.

“This is our first change to fees since 2003 and we believe that the new fee structure will be simpler to use for our customers.

“GRO certificate services are self-financing and costs must be recovered to ensure taxpayers do not subsidise them. This is a responsibility we take extremely seriously.

“We will continue to play our part in keeping costs as low as possible by bringing in technological efficiencies and improvements.”

The cost of ordering certificates online with a GRO reference number, using the standard service, will rise from £7.00 to £9.25. A number of other charges, however, will fall to this new standard fee, including those for certificates where customers do not know the reference number.

Three of the four priority overnight service charges will also fall to a flat fee of £23.40.

The Registrar General has also announced new fees to be charged by the Local Registration Service throughout England and Wales for issuing copies of certificates (up from £7 to £9 per certificate), and officiating at weddings and civil partnerships for those who are housebound or detained.

The charge for registering marriages at registered buildings – those buildings that are registered for the solemnization of religious marriages other than Anglican churches – has also been changed.

These new fees, which also come into effect on 6 April, reflect the actual cost of providing the services and follows a review undertaken by local authorities together with the GRO.

For more information on GRO services and to order certificates online go to the Directgov website.

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2 Responses

I note the Registrar General’s statement that fees, for copy certificates, to be charged by the Local Registration Service are to rise to £9. However when recently completing an application form on line to the Hertfordshire Local Registrar the fee was shown as £15. Thinking this may have been as a marriage certificate was required which, I know, can be more time consuming to find I looked at the cost for a copy birth certificate only to find this alaso was £15. Do you know if Local Registrars can set their own charges and if anybody else has experienced this in other areas?Incidently on my marriage request I was able to quote the quarter and year of the event although not the church/chapel where it took place.

Looking at the Herts. County Council website, I see that the charge of £15 is for a priority service, although there’s no mention of a non-priority service.

I know that someone wrote to one of the family history magazines fairly recently to ask whether local registrars could add a charge for postage (this was on top of the £7 charge, so it must have been before the increase to £9).

I’m pretty sure the answer was no they couldn’t, but although I’ve been looking through the recent issues of “Practical Family History” and “Family Tree”, I can’t find the query and reply.

I’ll keep looking, but if anyone else out there knows which issue it was of what magazine, then can they please let us know.